Disclosed is a method for communication by a base station in a wireless communication system, including transmitting, to a user equipment (UE), downlink control information (DCI) including information on a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) for processing downlink data using an MCS table among a plurality of tables, and transmitting, to the UE, the downlink data, wherein each of the plurality of MCS tables indicates modulation orders and code rates, wherein the plurality of MCS tables comprises a first MCS table which supports 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and a second MCS table which does not support 256 QAM, and wherein a number of MCS indexes in the first MCS table is equal to a number of MCS indexes in the second MCS table.